


Feathers, Pages, Dust

by RootsOfOurRemiges



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Character Study, Gay Male Character, Heaven is homophobic, It's About The Allegories, M/M, Sandalphon In Particular But It's All Of Them, The A/C Is A Distant Hope On The Horizon But It's Within Sight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28847478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RootsOfOurRemiges/pseuds/RootsOfOurRemiges
Summary: He could envelop himself in any number of comforting fantasies and half-measures, the freedom lay not in hiding but in persisting.
Relationships: Aziraphale (Good Omens)/Other(s), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	Feathers, Pages, Dust

Heaven would disapprove. Aziraphale knew it to be true, even when he could not bear to admit as much.

(“Yes, as it so happens. It's true. Men, yes, and the company thereof. Surely you’ve heard of it?”)

There was always the _chance_ , he’d rationalized, that the cities razed in the desert had nothing to do with him, that Sandalphon’s curled lip of repulsion was reserved only for the vicious inhospitality, the horrors of violence, and that all else was incidental. Nothing that would be unduly tangled in the moral of the story.

But of course, by the time the burnt-out rubble was buried in dust and the apocryphal recountings of the event were echoing through cathedrals in every language, that was not how they were remembered. And just as form shaped nature, myth shaped truth, until whatever the original intentions were and whatever the untranslated texts said no longer mattered. The sneers of churchgoers proved mirror images of the sneer that had prefaced Sandalphon’s wrath, and well, that was that, then.

There was never any telling what day, year, century would be the one when Heaven’s laissez-faire disinterest in how Aziraphale conducted his time on Earth turned to keen, meticulous scrutiny. If there was any routine to these impromptu performance reviews, he’d lost track of it long ago.

As it was at least, they most often came to call on him while he was dining or reading, and those intrusions he could abide knowing they were far from the most incriminating outcome he risked. He could endure their ridicule of the human digestive tract and the consumption of so-called gross matter, or their scornful apathy toward the fancies of the human imagination and the tales they spun with ink and vellum. He swallowed the humiliation with careful reserve, holding fast to his gratitude that they’d yet to find him in a bathhouse or a strange bed.

It was reason enough to give up the pleasure of sleep in exchange for vigilance.

Really, it was for the best. Aziraphale could only ever be a fleeting guest in the lives of human men anyhow, knowing he would always glow too brightly in the luminous gold of daybreak, a beacon for unsolicited attention and danger. So he resigned to being loved only in the dark, and granting quiet blessings of safety and good fortune as apology for his silent departure. He could at least secure the futures of the men he loved, let each one go into the welcoming arms of another after he left their lives, and it would be enough — as much as he longed to shelter a lover with his wings and look after him for the rest of his days, he was not that sort of miser, and human hearts were not his to hoard.

He hoarded instead the writings they left behind, the permanent impressions of impermanent lives that he could keep and care for. Just as long as he could keep the spines from cracking, the bindings from fraying, the written excerpts of humanity were his forever, and he would never have cause to part with one.

And as incomplete as such excerpts were, they were _something_. No matter how Heaven prodded and pried and peered over his shoulder, Aziraphale would always have those romances, bound in prose and poetry, for when the wings of his angelic heart fluttered with such insistent beats against his ribs that he feared it may escape and cost him his dearest waking fantasies. His idle thoughts of sleeping soundly through unworried dreams of whatever he liked best, and awakening to those dreams made material by the firm embrace of arms around his middle and a bristly chin tickling the back of his neck. It would take a miracle, and one well beyond his modest power, to burn away the mantle of fear between his heart and the unbidden love he yearned for.

Or, after further consideration, perhaps not a miracle at all, but its natural antithesis — demonic intervention. The very sort that Aziraphale was charged with thwarting, that was the endless fascination of angry fearful sermons, and yet had come to his rescue in so many forms that surpassed even his most self-indulgent daydreams. The sort to which he owed his life many times over, and thus perhaps in a way, every human he’d ever loved and protected owed the same.

The sort he may yet someday be daring enough to accept.


End file.
